Shine a Light Into Dark Places (Star Wars NJO AU)
by DrMckay
Summary: Shortly after peace between the Galactic Alliance and the Yuzzhan Vong, Jacen Solo is on Coruscant, trying and failing to fit back into his old life after losing his younger brother and being imprisoned and tortured for a year. One day, he receives a visitor who has survived similar, and may give Jacen some needed perspective. His name is Tycho Celchu and he was held at Lusankya.


Shine a Light Into Dark Places (Star Wars NJO AU)

A few months after the peace is signed between the Galactic Alliance and the Yuzzhan Vong, Jacen Solo is on Coruscant, trying and failing to fit back into his old life after losing his younger brother and being imprisoned and tortured for a year.

One day, he receives a visitor who has survived something similar, and may give Jacen some much needed perspective.

His name is Tycho Celchu, and he was held at _Lusankya_.

_**Disclaimer: Despite my basically badass beard, I'm not Lucas and I don't own any of the rights to anything Star Wars. If I did, Chewie would still be kicking, Fate of the Jedi and "Uber-evil Jacen all of a sudden out of nowhere" wouldn't have happened, and Aaron Allston would have been commissioned to write at least twenty more books about the New Republic and its armed forces. **_

_**Oh, and we'd have an X-Wing Series TV show produced by the Justified showrunners and scored by Bear McCreary. **_

_Without further ado:_

**Shine a Light Into Dark Places**

_For the Fallen_

_"They went with songs to the battle, they were young._

_Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow._

_They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,_

_They fell with their faces to the foe._

_They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:_

_Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn._

_At the going down of the sun and in the morning,_

_We will remember them._

_They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;_

_They sit no more at familiar tables of home;_

_They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;_

_They sleep beyond England's foam"_

_~Robert Laurence Binyon_

On the third day of self-imposed exile in his new apartment, the door buzzer shattered Jacen's snooze.

The young Jedi shot upright on his living room couch, pushed rudely into wakefulness after a two hour nexu-nap. A full night of sleep in a bed was something he had trouble with these days, even with a quiet room and a talent for meditation.

It also didn't help that Jacen hadn't unpacked yet. His bedroom was still full of boxes, so a GA Bedroll on the couch served him just fine. It felt less... Permanent.

Sometimes Jacen's subconscious was just weird like that_. _It was part of the reason he had moved out in the first place.

It had been why he had gotten his own place, off the grid a bit in a boring sub-block of Rebuilt Coruscant so new it practically smelt of hot metal and fabrication. It was why it had been a week, and he hadn't given his parents his address yet.

Han and Leia had looked at him sadly, but they hadn't asked for it either. They were giving him _space_.

Jaina was the only one who knew where he was. She helped him move in, hauling boxes out of a robo-hack before an airspeeder flown by none other than Jagged Fel, (late of Imperial service) had landed in front of the apartment complex.

As he greeted Jacen, Jag's firm handshake, formal demeanor, and rakish scar were offset somewhat by the shirt he was wearing, a hideous button-up with lavender and white floral patterns, a gift, Jag said, from his uncle.

They had both proceeded to help haul boxes into the place, Jaina conveniently bumping Jag with her hip, worming the story out of him while Jag had turned an entertaining shade of red, and providing Jacen with his third genuine smile since the war ended.

"He said, 'If you're going on vacation, you might as well look like it,' Jag had recounted mournfully. 'I have just the thing. I even wore it on an espionage mission. I believe there may be holos, just don't ask about the mustache. Or Janson.'

"I have no idea what any of that means. The man's my commanding officer, and my Uncle. Was I supposed to refuse this monstrosity?"

A few embers of the naturalist that had survived combat, capture and torture stirred in Jacen, cataloging the fact that Jag's clueless shrug combined with the terrible shirt combined to induce sympathy in the Gender _Female, _Species _Solo._

As his dad would say, Jaina went all _gooey _and set the next box down to give Fel a hug and whisper something in his ear.

Jag's eyes widened slightly, his Chiss upbringing divulging very little.

As Jacen's already impressive level of respect for the strategic planning abilities of one General Wedge Antilles, Retired, bumped up another notch, Jaina hauled in the last box that remained in the courtyard.

Seeing the smile on her face, Jacen was glad their connection didn't come naturally anymore. It wasn't just that he _really _didn't need to know how she was feeling about Jag in the moment.

_It was that if she knew how I was actually feeling, she would refuse to leave me alone at all, and Jaina needs all the happiness she can get._

Instead, his twin gave him a quick hug and her comm frequency before herding Jag into the passenger side of the speeder and blasting off, spiralling, jinking and juking a lunatic's path through the traffic patterns at a velocity most sentients would consider suicidal.

Jacen would swear later that he heard twin whoops of excitement as they vanished in the distance.

Walking to a corner shop, Jacen did the math on what would happen if the two of them ever had children.

_This could lead to a galactic crisis of epic proportions. _Jacen thought with a wry smile, _Combine the tactical acumen, piloting skill, and probably-genetic danger-magnet tendancies of the Skywalkers, Solos, Antilles and Fel clans into a dynasty of inevitably adorable Force-powered expert pilot-Jedi-generals._

__

_Or the little tykes'll just become pastry chefs or award-winning architects. Sure. And then maybe we'll find another clone of the emperor who has been absolutely dedicated to flower-arranging, street art and humanitarian outreach all this time and really just wants to get on with things._

Jacen gave a quiet snort of amusement before looping into thinking about what Anakin and Tahiri's kids would have looked like.

That thought started a dull ache in his gut as he walked, an old pain, but still sour and getting more so.

A year in captivity had given Jacen time to brood, have conversations with himself, question every decision he remembered a thousand times over, and replay each moment of the Mykr raid while noting all the times he could have saved Anakin-

The two-tone of the shop's entry scanner jolted Jacen from his reverie, and as he roamed the aisles, he weighed the benefits of breaking in his new apartment by getting absolutely wrecked on cheap alcohol in classic "Kid-out-on-his-own" fashion.

His dad had even suggested going out drinking with friends after Jacen had refused to talk to him about anything.

Since his dad had crawled into a bottle after Chewie died, such advice held no appeal for Jacen.

Jacen had become a Jedi Knight and taken lives before the age of twenty. Hangovers had nothing on the Embrace of Pain.

In the moment, the charms of Cereal, blue milk, and takeout while watching stupid holodramas appealed to him much more.

For the next three days, he napped on the couch, buried the kitchen in a cityscape of order-in containers and utensils, and didn't leave the apartment.

The holoprojector humed dully in the background, reminding him that technology still existed and that the Vong hadn't won as he slept fitfully until the door buzzer jolted him.

Jacen got up, belted a robe, and walked to the door, extending his left hand before feeling the satisfying _-thwack-_ as his lightsaber flew into it.

Of course it wasn't _his _lightsaber. Not the one he built as a student with a corusca gem pulled from the Yavin gas giant himself. Not the one he had taken Tenel Ka's arm with in a stupid, youthful accident.

It was a blue generic with no history, made by Corran Horn or one of the other apprentices in the three-day process they had to use to replenish their stock of weapons while the "stock" of Jedi dwindled during the War.

_The blade length is a few micrometers different, and it's slightly heavy on the back end, but it'll serve._ Jacen thought as he extended his senses_. _

__Nothing out of the ordinary for his apartment block, just the usual turmoil of dramas familial and interpersonal, though he detected a familiar, if detached focus on his door above all others.

Understandable given that his buzzer had sounded. But who could have his address?

Peering through the peephole revealed none other than Colonel Tycho Celchu, the husband of their childhood caretaker Winter, and a former Rogue Squadron pilot and CO wearing stylish civilian garb, and holding a smallish parcel in both hands.

Celchu's aristocratic features had been worn fine with lines and wrinkles to spare, and his blond hair was graying. It made him look more human, less like a middle aged actor out of a holo-ad for blue milk.

He was probably not a Vong in a masquer. There were no obvious Sith agents behind him.

Jacen hit the door release and pasted a fake smile on his face.

"Colonel Celchu, what can I do for you today?"

The older man smiled, which softened the lines of his pale, aristocratic features into something more fatherly, before shifting the parcel to one hand and tugging on his blank collar with the other,

"No décor today, Jacen. Just Tycho is fine. I'm here with your housewarming gift."

"Er, thanks." Jacen said, clipping the lightsaber to his robe's sash, "Why don't you come in."

Tycho stepped inside and was confronted by the miasma of smells of dishes, trash and young Jedi Knight left alone far too long.

"Sorry about the mess." Jacen said, sealing the doorway and sounding more like his father in that moment than he would ever know.

Celchu raised a single aristocratic eyebrow.

"So you're at the hole-up in-the room stage?"

"What?"

"Your sister asked me to look in on you while she was gone. So did your father." Tycho said, before glancing at a sink piled high with dirty dishes, "Let me help you with these."

Jacen's expression became one of embarrassed mortification, "Uh, I can do it. I just sort of forgot about them for a while."

Tycho brushed off his protest with a wave, before shucking out of his light coat and leaving it on the only clean section of counter.

"I'm just going to.." Jacen jerked a thumb at the bedroom and refresher, as Tycho nodded started on the dishes.

Jacen stopped in his room for some clean clothes, and found that the only thing he had to wear was a set of unmarked tan fatigues, which had been the first thing his rescuers gave him to change into when he escaped, and a couple of tunics in a pasteboard box.

The fatigue material was rough on his fingers as he picked them up. The color of the jacket reminded him of mud and dust and blood and far, far too many soldiers wearing the color dying around him, and Jacen felt suddenly trapped, in his own apartment. He snuck a peek out the bedroom door and saw Celchu in the kitchenette area washing dishes and bagging takeout containers, destroying the stacks of carelessly assembled tiny skyscrapers like a giant construction droid.

The Colonel wasn't blocking the front door, and Jacen realized he had a way out right before he realized he had stopped breathing.

He consciously started again, running through one of the first techniques Uncle Luke had taught him before stepping into the refresher, locking the door, checking the lock, and standing there longer than he had to as the hot water washed over him until a voice in his head that resembled his mother's told him to 'get out there and be polite to company.'

Grudgingly, Jacen exited the shower, towelled off, and donned the fatigue pants and an obnoxious tunic Janson had sent him that said "Yellow Ace, Pretty Face" in garish print over a cartoon picture of Red Squadron hero Jek Porkins.

He hung the jacket off of one shoulder and exited the refresher to a kitchen that had been magically cleaned, the refuse reduced to a stack of two large sacks.

"Thank you Colonel." Jacen said, "But I didn't know maintenance of my apartment fell onto the Fleet duty roster for today."

"Actually," Tycho said, smiling a little, "It's General now. I retired again after the peace was signed and they just threw these at me. I can clean whatever I want right now." The older man reached into his pocket and pulled out a small felt box, which he opened to reveal a gold insignia pin with five pips on it.

"Congratulations General." Jacen said, managing to keep all but a hint of bratty teen out of his voice.

_Why is __**he**__here?_

Celchu quirked a small smile, "Thank you Jacen, as I said when I got here, this is a social call. Call me Tycho if you want. We did fight a war together and hopefully I'm an odd sort-of family at this point."

"We did." Jacen acknowledged flatly. "We are."

Tycho pursed his lips, as if unsure what to say next, before deciding to get the topic back on track, "It's great you know, I finally got even with Wedge. Until _he _retired and they promoted him to Admiral." He shrugged. "Ah well, if nothing else it's alliterative now... "Admiral Antilles' and all that."

They both smiled briefly, more than the observation warranted and stood silent, watching each other, before Tycho spoke: "I suppose you're wondering why I'm here today."

"You told me. Dad and Jaina told you to check up on me."

"And you're wondering why me?"

"Yes."

"Before she helped you move in, your sister came and talked with me. About my past. About things that had happened to me during the Civil War. Things I might have in common with you now, sad to say. Things she wanted me to speak with you about."

"Why didn't she tell me she was worried?" asked Jacen, brow furrowed, still standing in the kitchenette, evaluating Tycho as the older man stood as well, still not too close, and not blocking his exit route to the door.

_A conscious positioning, _Jacen finally realized, _To set me at ease._

"You weren't really talking to anyone at that point. Not really conversing, that is."

"I guess. Uh, I'm sorry," Jacen said suddenly, "I haven't invited you to sit."

he extended a hand, and the two boxes on top of the living room chair rose up and deposited themselves gently on the floor as he made his way over the couch facing it, and sat.

"That never gets old," Tycho said, sitting in the chair with a mischevious glint. "On Hoth, we had Lukey, um, your Uncle Luke, move an X-wing toy one of the techs put together around Wedge's head while Dack Ralter pretended to fly it with a datapad. Took Wedge half an hour of disassembling the model to try and fix it only to learn that it had no internal parts."

Jacen chuckled, and then asked, "So what did Wedge do?"

"Lieutenant Wedge Antilles, Rebellion hero and ace pilot, Moral example to the Echo Base troops and pure as the Coriolis-driven Ice Blizzards of Hoth?" Tycho asked, "Oh nothing much. He just smiled, shrugged and volunteered to cook dinner."

"Doesn't sound so bad." Jacen replied.

"Shows what you know," Tycho shot back "He boiled what was left of one of the Tauntans a recon team brought back wounded into salty grayish chunks while he ate a gourmet meal cooked by Mon Mothma's batman, and he calmly informed us that he had traded a week's worth of our military rations for the dinner and some Holonet time at the Comm Center."

"Really," Jacen asked, "Wedge?"

"Really," Tycho said. "But then he pulled out a case of Whyren's and some candies that he traded a day of our rations and some old holodramas for and shared them around."

"_That_ sounds more like him." Jacen replied, "And it's a great story. Now that you've officially set me at ease, what did you want to talk to me about?"

The Alderaanian's expression went from warm and amused, to careworn and slightly hurt.

Jacen immediately felt like the worst person in the galaxy._Well, maybe not Palpatine but.._

His eyes widened, "Sorry." he said, gesturing helplessly, "I'm not sure what came over me."

Celchu waved it off, "It's all right Jacen. I was sidestepping the conversation as well. It's a tough one for me to have."

"You said you had gone through something similar to what happened to- What I..."

Jacen trailed off, and Tycho picked up the thread of conversation,

"Your parents never talked about what happened to me much, did they?"

"I know you used to be an Imperial," Jacen said, That "you defected and then were captured by the Empire. That you were tried for treason and acquitted. Public record didn't list much else."

"I'm surprised," Tycho said, raising an eybrow, "I didn't know I rated much of a peek from you."

Jacen smiled thinly, "When Jaina and I found out you were seeing Winter, we had to check you out."

The normally reserved Alderaanian gave a brief smile, "Of course you did. Did I pass?"

"You passed when Anak-" A sadness him, followed by rage as the memory presented itself, and the smaller items in the room seemed to vibrate for a moment before the young man closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and let it go. As he did, a wistful look appeared on his face.

"Anakin decided he liked you. That was enough." A suspicious look took up root on his face. "Is this the part where you tell me about when you were a prisoner and then you talk to me about how bad things were under the Empire, and then we have things in common and you tell me things 'aren't my fault' before hugging it out, and then everything is better, you know, like in the holodramas?"

"No Jacen. This is the part where I tell you what happened to me and we try to trust each other.

We'll each have trusted the other with information about our vulnerabilities, which do in fact exist for you no matter how many times you pull up the calm Jedi facade."

"That's fair." Jacen muttered. "What happens after that."

Tycho looked at him sadly; "You listen to me talk about things I've told to exactly four people other than yourself, and then you can talk about what happened to you, if you feel comfortable enough. Then I leave your abode and you go live your life and deal with the nightmares as they come. Hopefully you open up a little bit and they don't bury you."

"Who were the four people?" Jacen asked, desperately trying for a change of subject.

"Winter," Tycho answered without hesitation, "Because she's my life, Wedge, because he's the only brother I've got left, and he smuggled a bottle of Whyren's into my holding cell before he asked me, Corran because he was at the same prison later, and Iella because she wanted to know what her husband had undergone."

"Her husband?" Jacen asked, a puzzled expression on his face.

"Her first husband, Diric was tortured and turned by Isard. She had to gun him down when he tried to kill her and someone she was protecting. She and Wedge don't talk about it much."

"Understandable," Jacen said, "So why me?"

"I figured it might help if you knew you weren't the only one it happened to." Tycho said, eyes downcast, "Hell of a thing to have in common with someone though."

"Yeah." Jacen said. There wasn't much else he could say to that.

"Did you learn about Ysanne Isard in school?" Celchu asked.

"Icehart? Sithspit, those still holos of Krytos victims alone gave me nightmares for a week."

"At Bakura, we captured a recon TIE fighter, among other things, and we had what we thought were current fleet codes for Coruscant. We packed it full of recording equipment, and I volunteered to fly it.  
>My entry codes in were good, my codes out had been compromised. I got hit by an Ion cannon that shorted out every system in the TIE including the self-destruct and was handed over to Isard.<p>

She became my captor. My warden, and my torturer for months. I was one of her 'projects,' but not a very good one."

"Why not?" asked Jacen, "Were you fighting it all the way?"

The older man shook his head sadly, "Not as much as I could. I tried for a while, but I just went catatonic with it. Injections, hypnotherapy, holograms talking in my dead father's voice, pain, pain pain and darkness."

He stopped for a moment and gathered himself,

"Beyond that I don't remember much until they transferred me to the prison colony at Akrit'tar. That was a vacation compared to Lusanka. I broke out of there in three months and got back to the Alliance, but it felt too easy. I sat there, in my old uniform looking at people with fear and distrust in their eyes when they stared at me."

"You were a defector, right?" Jacen asked, "Weren't you already used to being under suspicion?"

Celchu shook his head. "Not like this. There was sort of an unofficial rule among Alliance forces that all Imperial Defectors got the first one free. Intel would keep an eye on you, but that was about it. This time, it was people I'd flown alongside after I'd already proven myself treating me like they were handling a time-bomb with fine-knit gloves."

"Harsh," Jacen said "There was no way to tell for sure though right, so even you didn't know?"

"Yes. I didn't know for sure either. I may have put on a good show, but I wasn't really at peace until Corran told me he'd seen my file, and that Isard hadn't gotten her hooks into me. I wasn't a bomb waiting to go off and hurt the people I loved."

"How did you deal with that feeling?" Jacen asked.

Tycho chuckled a bit, "Well it helped a bit that Wedge didn't believe it. He told me I was "Too stubborn to get brainwashed," once, and never mentioned it again. He fought at the highest levels of command for me to fly and fight with the Squadron in any way I could, and all I could think was, 'what if she did turn me. What if one day I plunge a vibroknife in between my best friend's shoulders without thinking?' In that way, Corran Horn's endless suspicion of me was welcome."

"Why?"

"Because it made me angry."

"Isn't anger a poisonous emotion?" asked Jacen, "How could that possibly have helped?"

"Don't tell me you've never been angry." Tycho said, eyes flashing,. "I don't care what Luke says, everyone feels. And anger's only poison if you let it fester. That anger at Corran for suspecting me, anger at myself for maybe being a sleeper, it made me feel again. Yes, I had to keep a leash on it but we all do. We're all human. We all feel, we all care, even when we try not to let ourselves. It gave me something to fight for again."

"I don't understand." Jacen said, "How could you say you tried not to care? You and Winter fought for years to bring an end to the war."

"You know we never had children."

"Yes." Jacen said.

"Would you like to know why?"

The younger man just nodded.

"Officially," Tycho said, leaning back in his chair, "It's because Winter had enough trouble with raising you lot, keeping everyone safe, and she practically has a family with you anyway." He stopped and stared at the younger man, "She thinks so anyway."

"She does." said Jacen, "Unequivocally."

"Unofficially is trickier though," Tycho said. Unofficially it's because she and I never had enough faith in the Galaxy to bring another life into it. One we were directly responsible for."

"Why?" Asked Jacen.

Tycho just shook his head.

"Little reasons Jacen. After Alderaan, we were afraid every day. Lasers and dogfights and covert ops didn't phase us. But the thought of our own flesh and blood carelessly annihilated in the blink of an eye?" Tycho paused, shaking his head as his eyes welled up. "I was lucky enough to resist Isard, determined enough to escape from A'kritar, and I was strong enough to endure my treason trial, but Force help me Jacen, I wasn't strong enough for _children_."

"Your parents were. So were Wedge and Iella, and so were Mirax and Corran. So they went ahead, and Winter and I got to see little pieces of them die each time they played messages from their kids when they were deployed. They'd replay them over and over again, with such a look in their eyes..."

He trailed off for a moment, a catch in his voice.

"We were afraid of the future. I thought for damnsure Winter and I had insulated ourselves. That our sacrifice had been for something and we would never, _ever _have to go through that, and then-"

"Mykr. Anakin."

"Yes." Tycho nodded, eyes wet.

"He meant so much, to so many people." Jacen said, So much pressure on him from a young age, to not just live up to, but surpass his namesake."

"He did at that." said Tycho.

"More. I just wanted him to be a kid. To be my brother, not anyone's damn anointed and destined savior-sacrifice!"

"You can't stop people from building legends out of flesh."

"But he'll be remembered _wrong_. No one's going to know about the times I had to haul him out of bed at the last minute on a school day, or the time he uploaded the combat protocols of Xim the Despot's war-droids into Threepio during a bank robbery...I should have protected him better. He was _my_ _little_ _brother_." Jacen sniffed, "Dad told me to look out for him, and I'll always feel like I failed."

Tycho's eyes grew cold for a moment, analytical, and Jacen suddenly knew what the man must look like as he killed. Utterly cold, totally dispassionate. A consummate professional.

"I'm given to understand that he led the mission, he planned the mission, and he died on the mission because he wanted to hold the line and refused medical treatment," Tycho said in a clipped professional cadence, before it became something softer, "You were children at war. Jedi or not, what did you think was going to happen?"

"We were..."

"I know what you were. You were all young and fast and strong and lucky," Tycho said sadly, "Maybe a bit more than the rest of us, but everything catches up eventually, Jacen. Even the stars burn out."

"I Know!" screamed Jacen "I know I know I know I know, but I am never going to accept that! I let him down. If I had been faster, or argued with him less..."

"_Jacen._" Tycho interrupted in a soft voice, "Jacen, look around. We all fail. We make mistakes every day, and occasionally sometimes we learn from them and grow."

"War just magnifies their consequences. The politicians failed, the generals failed, except for Wedge, who still managed to fail at failing when he accidentally dropped a Super Star Destroyer into an enemy fleet and gutted it at Borealis when he wanted to string the Vong along for a while. Even your parents feel like they failed because you and your siblings and your age mates had to fight at all."

"What?" Jacen started, angrily, "That's absurd! They held the galaxy together with spit and spacetape!"

"I said 'feel like they failed' Jacen. The reason they fought so hard when you were young, why they left you with Winter so often, was so that you and your brother and sister would never have to face what they did."

"But we did." Jacen said.

"Worse, I'd wager, and they thought you shouldn't have to." Tycho shook his head sadly, "Parents like yours, childhoods you had, and all that Jedi training, I can't imagine any of you sitting it out. Must have seemed like the next great adventure when it started."

Jacen shrugged, "That first blush? Sneaking in and rescuing the Ex-Gal worker, sure, after Serpendial, after Chewie, we were all in earnest."

Tycho nodded, "I remember when Jaina joined Rogue Squadron at the start of the war, your mother asked me for the survival rates of our frontline fighter pilots back before we really knew how to fight coralskippers. I gave it to her. The newest one we had. She looked at it, threw my datapad against the wall, and cried for exactly two minutes. Then she wiped her eyes and got us the logistical support we needed at First Ithor."

"Resorting to war is the very definition of failure for all sentient beings." He stopped a moment. "My father told me that when I left for the Imperial Academy. I didn't understand it then. I understand it now."

"The Death Star annihilated Alderaan on my lifeday. I was talking to my family, in my Imperial Lieutenant's uniform, about as old as you are now, and the connection went out. My father-"

Tycho seemed to have trouble speaking, "Was the head of the Holocom company that connected us. I planned to tease him about the shoddy service before I heard..."

The older man trailed off.

"That probably made things worse when you found out what happened, didn't it?" Jacen asked.

"Monumentally," Tycho replied, "I was the oldest. and I still feel like I failed them," He tapped his heart, "Here, even though I know there is nothing I could have done to save them, up here," he tapped his head. I still fight with myself when I remember. Every single year."

The two men were just sitting there in the living room talking, neither beating their chest, and somehow the tension was so thick between them it could be cut with a lightsaber.

"I wake up." Jacen said, "I wake up some mornings and I remember these dreams. I see darkness all around me, claws tearing into me and shadows killing me and my loved ones. Sometimes it's swallowing me, other times I die to it. Never do I make it out alive."

It's almost like there's something pushing at me, telling me if I don't do certain things, live a certain way, my family and everyone else I care about is going to die before their time."

He exhaled heavily. "I haven't told anyone. I can't tell if it's residual from what the Vong did to me or the Force trying to tell me something.

But that means I can't plan for things, things that might happen. What if I make the wrong decision?"

Tycho shrugged slightly, "I honestly don't know, Jacen. It looks like there are several options for you; but the main two seem to be letting your dreams control you, constantly preparing for the worst, perhaps unintentionally walking down that dark path, or resolving to live your life like any one of us, possibly blind to an impending threat.

"What would you choose? "

"Choosing one thing today doesn't really matter. You have to choose who to be every day. We can only live so long, Jacen. If I died today, I would die happy, fulfilled and free. I would die as myself, and after what I've seen, what people tried to turn me into, I am content being the man I choose every day to be."

"And Winter?"

Tycho's eyes turned sad. "She would moun me, and then go on and live her life, carrying, I hope, a small piece of me in her heart. In the end, that's you can do. Just go on."

"It sounds so simple, when you put it like that." Jacen said, a small grin on his face.

"It's not." Tycho said, smiling back, and "I think my housewarming gift might complicate things a little bit more. Could be in a good way though."

He got up and retrieved the package from the freshly-cleaned counter, and handed it to Jacen.

The housewarming gift proved to be a keycard and ownership documents to a small shuttle, courtesy of the past and present members of Rogue Squadron. Jacen was speechless as he felt his heart come to life suddenly, battering his ribcage and the world of his living room seemed to grow slightly smaller.

_Forty people I barely knew just got together to buy me a ship. _

"Thank you. It's very kind of you. Of all of you."

Tycho smiled. "We wanted you to go live your life, Jacen. Giving you the means to go anywhere was pretty self-explanatory."

"Again, thank you. I have a lot to think about now, which is better than this morning. I feel-I felt, somewhat trapped."

"Understandable." Tycho looked hesitant for the first time that day, "I'll leave you to your thoughts. My comm frequency's in there too, if you need to talk to me about...things. I know you consider Winter family, because she raised you all, but I hope..." he trailed off.

"Of course you are." Jacen said, more warmly than he had earlier, "And if I need to, I will."

The older man nodded. "I hope you never have to. But I'll be there if you do."

Jacen got up, joining Tycho as he was standing and showed the older man to the door, opening it as the two of them evaluated each other one final time.

"Thank you for dropping by, Tycho."

Tycho gave a soft, sad smile"Thank you for trusting me, Jacen."

The two men shook hands, and Tycho Celchu departed, looking as much as an ordinary man as he had when he arrived. He wasn't wearing a fancy uniform or Jedi robes, he carried no lightsaber, or even a rakishly-slung blaster on his hip since the Peace was signed, but in that moment and after, he looked to Jacen as much a hero as his mother, father and uncle had always been to him.

Jacen went back inside, took a look at the couch and the pad mattress and then shook his head. Those comforts felt hollow, like part of a prior life already.

He had some calls to make, and a bag to pack.

A week later, Jacen was pulling himself into the pilot's seat of the _Lujayne, _and couldn't help but feel relaxed. The seat was comfortable and even though the shuttle was armed with a hidden blaster cannon, it was so different from the X-Wings he had so uncomfortably flown in the war, _Jaina was always the pilot_, that none of the pressure to perform as well as her followed him.

Jacen completed his preflight checks completed and flight permission was given from Traffic Control. He had a few options. Seek out different Jedi traditions, follow Vergere's teachings, or chart his own course.

_Try to prepare and confront the dark dreams I've been having, or enjoy the life I have now, facing the darkness as it comes?_

Powering up the engines, _Lujayne_ soared towards her exit vector after a brief discussion with Coruscant traffic control.

Jacen had decided before boarding the shuttle. The rear was filled with cages and xenobiological equipment on loan from a small Coruscant university. He was going to do something young adults all over the galaxy did: write a dissertation and finish his education.

Ashe laid in a course for the Hapes Cluster Jacen Solo smiled at the memory of the comm call, of blushing at the mischevious glint in the new Queen Mother's grey eyes, and considered the new worlds he planned to study.

What better way for a Jedi to recover from a war than by studying the myriad of forms of life the galaxy had in store?

_The fact that the Hapes cluster has an incredibly diverse ecosystem in addition to its incomparable Queen Mother..._

He reached back and touched the rough fabric of the fatigue jacket that he had draped over the pilot's seat behind him. It wouldn't be as iconic as his father's black vests, but it would be useful when traversing rough planetary environments. It wasn't quite building a home on a garden world or exploring Jedi traditions across the galaxy, but it was a start.

He felt the weight of his new lightsaber on his belt, the so-called "generic."

It was not an unpleasant weight.

_A Jedi protects life as well. _

Jacen knew he would be a Jedi until the day he died, but that was a "-What-" a designation filling in for a life, and now he wanted more. He didn't just want to guide the future, he wanted to be a part of it again, as a brother, a son, a teacher and a friend and maybe eventually as a husband and father.

For the first time since the war began, and the twin supernovae losses of Chewbacca and Anakin had dulled him, Jacen Solo felt unreservedly happy, and as _Lujayne _broke the lightspeed barrier, something inside Jacen rattled free as well, and a tension lifted.

It felt like letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as he watched the vast icy beauty of hyperspace swirl around his ship.

His future was wide open.


End file.
